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Events

Exhibitions

The China Moment. Contextualizing Individualism in Chinese Contemporary Art

With The China Moment, the documenta Institut focuses on a decisive phase in contemporary Chinese art. Spanning the period from the 1980s to the present day, the exhibition examines how art in China reflected society during a time of profound transformation against the backdrop of a shift from globalization to the multipolar present. The 1980s marked the beginning of a period of profound political and economic change. Under the influence of Deng Xiaoping's reforms, a new artistic language emerged that combined individuality, social participation and humanistic perspectives. At the same time, China's opening up and increasing international networking offered new spaces for artistic experimentation and exchange with global discourses on individualism and social transformation. The exhibition shows how art not only reflected social developments, but often anticipated them. It reveals how the relationships between the individual, the state and society shifted and highlights what social energies, collective experiments and individual self-concepts emerged during this period.

detailsThe China Moment. Contextualizing Individualism in Chinese Contemporary Art
The China Moment. Contextualizing Individualism in Chinese Contemporary Art

Publications

Making Space: Independent Artists in Taiwan since 1988

As Taiwan transitioned from martial law, space became a new ground for artistic experimentation. On their own terms, artists reclaimed private apartments, vacant buildings and commercial premises to forge independent venues for radical exhibitions, curatorial experiments, community gatherings and new discourses. What had been called ‘extra-institutional artistic practice’ gradually expanded to reinvent independent art spaces themselves, with wide-ranging implications: from local river ecologies to public policy. Making Space: Independent Artist Initiatives in Taiwan since 1988 explores how Taiwan’s ‘avant-garde’ art transformed into what we now recognise as ‘contemporary art’, and where independent curatorial practice, led by artists, first took root.

detailsMaking Space: Independent Artists in Taiwan since 1988
Making Space: Independent Artists in Taiwan since 1988

Seeing through China. Mi You und Andreas Schmid im Gespräch mit Heinz Bude

In conversation with Heinz Bude, two perspectives on contemporary Chinese art intersect: that of artist and curator Andreas Schmid, who was active in China primarily in the 1980s and 1990s, and that of professor and curator Mi You, who was born in Beijing when Schmid left China. In 1993, Schmid, together with Hans van Dijk and Jochen Noth, presented the legendary China Avantgarde exhibition in Berlin and was part of a scene in China that leaped into the present without reservation. Mi You looks back on an art that succumbed to money, deluded itself with power, and is now uncertain of its posthumous fame.

detailsSeeing through China. Mi You und Andreas Schmid im Gespräch mit Heinz Bude
Seeing through China. Mi You und Andreas Schmid im Gespräch mit Heinz Bude

Videos

YouTube
Conference: “Art – Exhibition – Discourse”

Conference: “Art – Exhibition – Discourse”

The China Moment. Contextualizing Individualism in Chinese Contemporary Art

The China Moment. Contextualizing Individualism in Chinese Contemporary Art

Podcast